All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

My,' she said. 'We're lucky that you found the place.' We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.

Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.